


Mogul, Champion, Omen

by JustJasper



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Ficlet Collection, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-04-30 21:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5179649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlets concerning a Brosca, a Hawke and a Trevelyan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. things you said under the stars and in the grass

**Author's Note:**

> This collection is for one of my worldstates.
> 
> Warden = [Braenoc Brosca](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/tagged/braenoc_brosca)  
> Champion = [Cykeem Hawke](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/tagged/cykeem_hawke)  
> Inquisitor = [Malakai Trevelyan](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/tagged/malakai_trevelyan)
> 
> Adaar, Cadash and Lavellan may also show up, but in this 'verse they are non-Inquisitors.

“You are a strange one, even for an Orzammar dwarf, my love.”

Zevran flops down beside him, perching one foot on his raised knee and bouncing it to some unheard rhythm. Brosca says nothing, doesn’t need to, because he understands what he means. He looks out into the inky darkness up above, scattered with stars, and lets the lingering fear show with the smoke on his breath swirling and fading into the night. 

“My mother told me the sky was blue like sapphires, once,” he says. He offers the cigar to the other man, who takes it and lies back in the grass with him. “I imagined it like that for my whole life; beautiful and blue, strange, but solid like rock, somehow. Like if I floated away, eventually I’d hit the solid surface of the sky. But it’s so empty.”

“If this scares you, why do you do this?”

He thinks about Zevran on his knees, teeth red with blood and smiling at him like like a starving man at a baker’s door, and he thinks about how weighing the life of an assassin who had just tried to kill him in that moment seemed  _important_.

In the comfortable silence,  Zevran shifts and rolls into Brosca’s side, hand on his broad chest, thick cigar burning between elegant, work-worn fingers. He offers the end of the cigar to his lips as he blows out of a ring of smoke, chin tipped away to release it to the open sky. Brosca looks at the glimmer of his eyes in the near-dark, and the shining stars overhead.

“Frightening things can be beautiful.”


	2. jealous

Brosca’s eyes have been on him all night at the tavern table they’ve claimed, as Zevran flirts rather outrageously with the puppy; Alistair blushes such a pretty red, it’s hard to resist. 

Brosca nurses his beer and watches, lets the dog lay his head in his lap. Hasn’t let anyone put down their own coin for drinks all night. When Alistair takes the dog for a piss, Zevran slides along the bench, closing the distance between them.

“Are you jealous?” he asks. Brosca raises an eyebrow at him.

“Do you want me to be jealous?”

Zevran hums. “If you wish me not to indulge, my love…”

Brosca winds his arm around Zevran’s shoulder and pulls him into a kiss that lingers.

“If he oversteps, I’ll take his head.”

Zevran smiles at that, the dark sweetness of a threat he knows his lover would carry out in a heartbeat.

“But you set the line,” Brosca says easily. “If you’re happy, I’m happy. I’ll take care of you.”

Alistair is a good man, and very unlikely to warrant the separation of head from neck. It is still good to know, Zevran thinks.

“And I will take care of you, my love.”


	3. autolatry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Autolatry - The worship of one’s self

Malakai Trevelyan holds himself in the manner of someone who is keenly aware of the figure he cuts. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, considering the little he knows of the man’s past and how his family view him. Dorian believes it something they have in common, two handsome men who know it and see no point in denying it.

That is, until the first time Dorian sees the man without a shirt in the balmy night of the Oasis. He seems to glow in the moonlight, leaning on his staff, gazing out across the plateau, and Dorian has to chide himself for thinking of the vision as ethereal - Malakai would hate that.

He lets his own staff knock on the rock underfoot, communicating his approach. “Can’t sleep, dear Inquisitor?”

Malakai turns his face halfway, smiles at him fondly, and Dorian could just melt at that. “Just enjoying the heat without the sun. I burn something terrible, as you can imagine.”

Dorian comes to a stop next to him, and lets his eyes survey him appreciatively. He’d had some idea, of course, that Trevelyan was strong, but he’s broader and sturdier than he expected, more so than Dorian is. His arms are muscular and- apparently, scarred.

It is not the shadows then, and not the fluctuating light of the mark on the left palm; his forearms and biceps, over his shoulders and across his back are graced with branching scar tissue of varying severity, pink against the white skin, but a blueish-lilac in the night. They are familiar in a way that makes his stomach knot.

He realises he’s been staring too long when Malakaki turns his arm, displaying the inside flesh of his right, where the scarring is most significant, the lines harsh and hypertrophic.

“The Circle called them lightning figures,” Trevelyan says. His shoulders have squared, and his jaw has set, and Dorian thinks then it’s not the same nature  of confidence as his. People look at him and they see beauty, perfection, and he realises Trevelyan must be more used to people looking at him like a spectacle. He’s owned it like he’s owned being snowborn, no shame in him, but there’s something defensive and guarded that makes Dorian ache.

“They’re called storm flowers in Tevinter,” he offers. “They’re usually temporary marks, on mages who use powerful storm magic, or those who are the victims of such spells.”

Trevelyan hums. “The Enchanters used to reprimand me for them in the Circle. Said it showed a lack of discipline.”

He lifts his palm and Dorian feels the change in the atmosphere as he brings lightning to life in his hand. It arcs off each fingertip, crackling purple in the night, and when he lets the energy disperse tracks of light skitter along the scars on his arm, making them glow briefly a muted red, fading before they reach his elbow.

“It’s not the technique I was taught, but it works better for complex casting, for speed. A constant flow, a current that moves through you. After a while it was easier to let them believe I couldn’t manage their preferred technique, rather than the fact that I was choosing to do it another way.”

Dorian raises a hand in a obvious motion. “May i?”

Trevelyan nods, offering his arm to him. Dorian cradles it with one, gently as he dares without seeming to treat the man as though he’s fragile, and lets his fingers trail over the slightly raised scars from wrist to elbow.

“Do they hurt?”

“Yes.” Malakai incline his head, smiling slightly. “But only right after I’ve cast, and only a little. I always assumed I scar easily. Or it’s doing it repeatedly.”

“Stubborn.” Dorian lifts the man’s hand and kisses the knuckles. “They are very beautiful.”

Trevelyan frowns, and Dorian feels his chest lurch to see that response in the man’s face, and moves his lips away.

“I’m sorry. Perhaps that’s an inappropriate thing to say about scars.”

Trevelyan turns his hand against Dorian’s face, large hand cupping his jaw. “It’s not that. I’m just not used to anyone thinking that. People usually think they’re ugly, that they spoil the sight of me.”

“People clearly do not have my eye for perfection.”

Malakai kisses him, and Dorian lets his hand wander over his biceps, along the skittering scars, follows the lines with his fingertips to the centre of each branching mark. Trevelyan has always seemed powerful, but this display of the energy he deals with every day is raw and thrilling.

Trevelyan pulls away and rests his forehead against Dorian’s. “I was afraid the first time you saw them you’d…”

“Would what? Be scared away?”

“No.” He swallows. “That’s easier than when men stay, but can’t look at them. Being with someone who thinks a part of you is disgusting is an awful feeling, like they don’t view you as a whole person, just whatever parts they can stand.”

“I know.” Dorian kisses him with all the intent of words unsaid. “I see you. All of you.”


	4. kiss

He thinks he’s losing him. Wonders, really. Distance and time have made a mockery of promises, of words between the quiet spaces, under sheets and whispered into the dark.

It’s not until Dorian kisses him, shallow and gentle, almost hesitant after months apart, that Malakai knows it.

Whatever they have is ending, and they may have both already begun to mourn it.

“Do you have time to talk?” Dorian asks, words catching as they move around a word unsaid. He’d a good man, even if he doesn’t believe it; he wouldn’t use the word now, not when it would be an unkind thing.

It’s kindness, then, to stop here.


	5. ache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malakai Trevelyan as non-Inquisitor, one of Vivienne's loyal mages at Skyhold.

“Do they hurt, cousin of mine?”

Malakai peers at Pavus from over the top of his glasses. His own fault, wandering so close to the man’s claimed nook in the library.

“We’re not cousins.” 

“Perhaps not, but there’s a connection between us somewhere, if you look hard enough.”

Malakai rolls his eyes, and tries not to huff - Pavus only does it because he knows it annoys him.

“Our last training session had me thinking,” Dorian says, leaning against the corner of the bookshelf Malakai is browsing for reference. “You channel energy through the scarring, and one has to assume that hurt when you were first doing it, but does it hurt now, after so long?”

Pavus, at least, is one of the few mages who doesn’t seem ready to scold him for the self-infliction of the jagged scars along his arms and shoulders, unlike almost every mage out of the Ferelden Circles he’s met at Skyhold. Not their fault, of course; it’s not how they were trained, some of them probably under threat of punishment.

“It itches, mostly,” Trevelyan says. “It depends how much I do it. Aches, sometimes. Sometimes they hurt with the memory - as long scars sometimes do.”

“Yes,” Pavus says thoughtfully, eyes narrowed at him. An interested gaze, in more ways than just curiosity about his magic. “I might be interested in further study of the phenomenon, if you’re so inclined. It’s all rather fascinating.”

“You intend to take notes, do you?”

“Oh, there’ll be no need. I’ll catalogue it to memory, I do think.”

Interested indeed.


End file.
